Do Personal Strengths and Weaknesses Impact Subjective Well-being of Elderly?

Abstract

Everyone gets affected by the challenges of aging, but personal strengths and weaknesses of elderly people influence their well-being the most. The current study is designed to measure the impact of personal strengths (intergenerational social support and self-esteem) and weakness (loneliness) on Subjective Well-Being (SWB) of Malaysian institutionalized elders. A cross-sectional survey design is employed to arrive at the random sample (n = 192). The respondents belong to government operated old-age homes from the four states of Malaysia. There are four measurement instruments are used to assess the relationship among the variables. The hypothesis testing is dealt with SPSS (23.0) and analytical plan comprised of multiple regression analysis and t-Test. The results indicated that personal strengths (intergenerational social support and self-esteem) have significant positive impact on subjective well-being (4.329 ** , 12.440 ** ) and the loneliness contains nonsignificant negative impact on subjective well-being (-1.78) of Malaysian elders. The gender differences indicated that intergenerational social support is higher in male respondents as compared to female cohort. Further, females are experiencing more loneliness than the male elders. Similarly, self-esteem and subjective well-being remained higher in females as compared to male elders. The suggestions and limitations of the study are also cordoned off.